Descendants of Heroes: The Last Legacy
by Andiconversehoodies
Summary: Within a week after Gaia was defeated and the demigods of the Argo II returned home, a few select demigods find themselves in an empty house with a note from the Oracle of Delphi: It is of the utmost importance that they learn the things to come, or history itself may shatter.
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians or Heroes of Olympus.

* * *

_**Descendants of Heroes: The First Legacy**_

_**Prologue**_

The dying rays of a warm sunset peeked out over a grassy hill, illuminating several cabins in the distance. Tiny figures in orange t-shirts scuttled around the buildings, fixing and repairing gaping holes and charred rooftops. A quarter-mile to the east, organized masses of armor-clad purple figures marched around purple, red, and gold tents, each bearing the likeness of some animal. Tension buzzed through the air between the two camps, but none carried weapons—a smart maneuver suggested by the blonde-haired figure in orange picking her way towards the beach to the south.

Sitting at her destination, hugging his knees to his chest, was a boy—also in orange—with messy raven-colored hair and green eyes that closely matched the flow of the tides before him. He stared blankly out across the sound, lost in thought.

"Hey," the blonde girl sat down next to the boy, her grey eyes swirling with worry. "You okay?"

The boy shrugged. It wasn't much of an answer, but at least it was an answer.

She paused, staring out across the sea like he was, trying to think of something to say.

"Leo was able to sit up today. You should've seen the look on Calypso's face when she walked in on him fiddling with a bunch of springs. It was like she couldn't decide whether to be relieved or pissed, so she went with both."

The boy blinked—the only notification that he had heard her.

She sighed. He had been like this quite often the year before as well, after the second Titan war. But not nearly this bad. Of course he hadn't strolled through the mythological monster-waste-disposal-system in the Titan war.

The sound of a conch blew in the distance, interrupting the girl's worry. A massive sound of hammers and bricks dropping moved like an echo to the conch as the campers headed for the mess hall for dinner.

The girl stood up and dusted her jeans off, before offering her hand to the boy—sticking it directly in his face so he'd lean back, startled.

The boy blinked in surprise and confusion at the hand, then transferred his expression to the girl.

She smiled, "Come on, Seaweed Brain. You're no use to anyone starving to death."

The boy opened his mouth—most likely about to rasp that he wasn't hungry, as it seemed to be all he ever said now—but his stomach beat him to it with a fierce growl.

Annabeth-the-blonde-girl laughed. "You're such an idiot sometimes. Come on. Take my hand."

The briefest flicker of memory passed across Percy's sea-green eyes, and then he gave Annabeth a small smile, and took her hand.

The moment he did, a flash of light touched their joined hands, growing outward and around them until nothing was visible.

When the light vanished, the two teenagers were gone.

* * *

It was dark. And empty. And Annabeth was swimming.

She reached forward, struggling for a handhold to pull herself up out of the sticky darkness, but every try only pulled her farther back.

A mumbling voice reached her ears, and she strained to hear.

"—okay?"

Another voice answered, and suddenly she became aware of presences around her, invisible fingertips gently tugging her up out of the black. She struggled harder.

Then a single word echoed in the bleakness, in a voice that she hadn't heard clearly in days, shoving the black sticky fingers away until she could breathe again.

"Annabeth?"

Her name, in Percy's voice echoed around the emptiness, until she was so overcome with the sound that she slammed against the walls, harder than ever, and burst out of the inky black.

She opened her eyes.

"Percy?" she asked, her voice hoarse. She couldn't be sure that it was him who spoke, but something told her it was.

Sea green eyes surfaced in her line of vision, and she relaxed. His eyebrows were scrunched up, like they were when he was worried, and he lightly brushed her face with his fingertips, obviously relieved.

"What happened?" she croaked.

"I'm not sure," Percy's voice was slightly hoarse from disuse, "but I think it has something to do with Rachel."

Confused, Annabeth sat up, only to realize that she was sitting on a couch in a strange room, and surrounding her were several familiar faces.

The room looked a lot like the living room back in her home in San Francisco—a coffee table in the center, with two couches and an armchair surrounding it on three sides. Sitting up on the adjacent couch was a bewildered-looking Leo, his usually unruly curly hair dotted with oil and grease. Kneeling on the floor next to him, overworrying over the Latino Santa's elf, was Calypso, blowing a stray lock of caramel hair out of her eyes in her frustration. Standing halfway between the two couches, as if unsure as to whom to worry about, were Piper and Jason, with Reyna, Rachel, Thalia, and Grover to the side, whispering urgently over a ripped up and slightly burned slip of paper. Hazel and Frank stood on either side of Percy, hands relaxed and ready to grab their weapons at a moment's notice. And—as always—Nico stood in the dark corner, a frown set to his mouth that Annabeth found mildly creepy, as he purposely avoided looking the way of her couch.

"Percy," Annabeth muttered, turning back to the boy hovering next to her, "what do you mean 'something to do with Rachel'?"

"It's this," Rachel spoke up, holding out the piece of paper. "It claims to be a note from the Oracle of Delphi and the Fates. Only I'm the Oracle, and I don't remember writing it."

Annabeth took the paper and scanned it critically, struggling through the fancy script.

_Time is fracturing. I don't have much left._

_This is a warning to you, that I received special permission from the Fates to send back into my own time-stream. It took a lot of work and a fair amount of disintegration and reiteration—Kronos's left arm says hi—but if you're reading this, then I did it._

_This war in my time has been coming for thousands of years, since Nyx herself was born. And you can't stop it, or change it._

_But you can understand that it isn't over. You're not done yet. And you need to survive, for the future._

_Oracle of Delphi, seer of the Phoebus Apollo_

_P.S. Don't worry about your daily lives. The house you're in is suspended in time. Think of it like the Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. You could live and die here and as soon as you do die, you come back to the real world at the exact moment and in the exact state and age that you left—only a little more knowledgeable._

When Annabeth finished, she looked up at Rachel. "You're the Oracle. Do we listen or not?"

Rachel frowned, fiddling with the green sharpie she had been using to draw a Greek Delta on her jeans. "Well, normally I would say that curiosity killed the cat. But that same weird feeling I get when the Oracle is about to possess me is tingling. I think we should listen."

Leo raised an eyebrow. "Your spider sense is tingling?"

Rachel rolled her eyes. "Yes, Stan Lee. My spider sense is tingling. We need to listen. I don't know how I have no memory of writing this, but it's legitimate."

"Well, it says something about time, doesn't it?" Percy asked. "There's no telling _when_ the Oracle possessed its host to write this."

"Touché," Rachel frowned thoughtfully. "In any case, we found that note on top of a box on the coffee table. We were trying to decide whether to open it or not or wait for you, Annabeth."

Annabeth glanced over at the table, eyeing the small brown cardboard box sitting next to a Hephaestus TV coaster. What did they have to lose? They were stuck in a weird house that she had a feeling had no way out.

"Let's open the box," Annabeth decided aloud. "Leo? Got a knife?"

"On it!" Leo reached into his magic toolbelt and pulled out a Swiss Army knife. Unable to stand up because he was still too weak, he handed the knife to Calypso, who passed it to Percy, who sliced the tape on the box and then passed it back.

Inside the box was an old fashioned stereo and a set of cassette tapes.

_It's like Th1rteen R3asons Why_, Annabeth thought, remembering the book she'd finished the month before Percy first disappeared to Camp Jupiter, the military camp for Romans like Hazel, Frank, Reyna, and Jason.

Each cassette tape had two small numbers in the corner on each side, in green paint instead of blue nail polish like the book Annabeth had read. But each tape that had a second number one on it also had words across the front. Tape 1-1 read _The First Legacy_. Tape 2-1 said _The Mare Nostrum_. Tape 3-1 read _The Fire of Maris_. Tape 4-1 said _The Descent to Oblivion_. And tape 5-1 read _The Last Light_.

Percy frowned for a moment, set the stereo on the table, and slowly slid in tape 1-1.

* * *

[PLAY]

**Time.**

It was a girl's voice, about their age. Light and cheerful, yet weighed down and dramatic at the same time, much like Percy at times.

**This thing all things devours. Birds. Beasts. Trees. Flowers. It gnaws iron. It bites steel. And it grinds hard stones to meal. It slays kings. It ruins towns. And it beats a high mountain down.**

"Well, at least she's read the Hobbit," Annabeth mumbled. "She's either mortal or a stubborn daughter of Athena."

Curiously enough, the tape paused for Annabeth to speak, almost as if the girl who recorded this would know what Annabeth was going to say and when.

**Time passes for all creatures in this world. And if those creatures were to stop spinning, the world would go right on spinning without them.**

* * *

**A man sat in a bay window, watching the raindrops dance in the rough thunder, occasionally illuminated by the brief lighting of the dark cloudy night. His black hair glistened silver, and his green eyes swirled with thought as he watched the sky weep, feeling like weeping himself.**

**A shriek broke his contemplation, and he glanced behind him to see a flash of blue fabric, and then suddenly a dark shape bowled him over and knocked him into the windowpane, jostling the dancing raindrops in their reverie.**

**The man looked down at his lap to see a tiny curtain of long brown hair, shivering. He couldn't suppress a small smile.**

"**What's the matter, sweetheart?" he asked the little girl clinging to his waist.**

When the man spoke in the story, a deep, familiar male voice came from the stereo instead of the girl's. Something was extremely familiar about that voice, but Annabeth couldn't put her finger on it. Why would she know well a man in his thirties or so?

"**Sp-" the girl fumbled in a stammering whisper. "Sp-sp-spi-"**

**The man rolled his eyes amusedly, knowing all at once what the problem was. "There's a spider in your room, isn't there?"**

Annabeth felt like scoffing at the character's eye-rolling at a "simple spider," especially after Arachne dragged her down to Tartarus, but she didn't want to call attention to herself for talking to a book.

**The little girl looked up and sniffed, nodding at him with large, teary green eyes whose color were much like his own.**

"Maybe she's his daughter?" Grover asked. "Maybe she's a demigod and he's her mortal parent. With the spider thing I'd guess probably Athena, but I've never known of a child of Athena to not have grey eyes."

**He picked up the girl and set her down next to him, turning to sit cross-legged facing her.**

"**Alexis Lucia Jackson," he said to the shivering little girl, looking her straight in the eye, "do you remember why your name is what it is?"**

Silence fell around the room, and several mouths dropped open, including Annabeth's herself.

"Did…" Percy stumbled, his face as white as a sheet and his shock breaking his silence, "did he just say _Jackson_?!"

"Alexis Lucia Jackson," Grover mumbled. "I don't know of any demigod with that name. Have you got a cousin or something, Perce?"

Percy shook his head. Everyone knew his mom's brothers had died too early in their lives to marry and have kids.

**The little girl gave a shy nod, and her small voice sounded like a whisper over the crack of thunder. "My first name means "defender of people" in Greek. And my middle name is after a demigod called Luke Castellan."**

"What?" yelled Annabeth.

"Who's Luke Castellan?" Leo asked.

"The leader of Kronos's demigod forces in the second Titan War last year," Thalia mumbled, her face as white as Percy's now. "But he died a hero."

"**Exactly," the man smiled. "And that demigod was perhaps the bravest man I have ever known. You were named what you were so that you could always carry on that bravery. And someday, I hope that it will save your life."**

"So her father named her after a traitor so she'd carry on the traitor's legacy?" Jason asked. "Maybe that's what the tape means by _The First Legacy_."

Annabeth glared bloody murder at Jason over the traitor comment, but she said nothing.

"Maybe not," Rachel mused. "If this man knew who Luke was, then he's most likely a demigod who survived the Titan War, and the legacies that the Romans do with training could work, so she could technically be the first _Greek_ legacy. But the only green-eyed survivor of the Second Titan War I can think of is…"

Slowly, all eyes crept over towards Percy, who looked about ready to faint.

"Jackson…" Hazel whispered, shocked.

**Alexis's tears stopped, and her trembling mouth formed into a small smile.**

"**Now," the man said with a smile and a mischievous twinkle in his eye, "do you really think a little spider is going to stop you from being the bravest little girl ever?"**

**Alexis giggled. "No, daddy."**

"**No? Are you sure?" Mr. Jackson reached forward and tickled his daughter for emphasis, until her giggles and shrieks outlived the rain, becoming something much more cheerful than what they were before.**

"**Daddy!" Alexis squealed. "St-st-stop i-it!"**

Annabeth couldn't help thinking that—if their suspicions were correct—Percy seemed to make a good father.

**Mr. Jackson stopped, waiting patiently for Alexis's giggles to subside. When they did, he stood up out of the bay window and held out his hand, walking her back to her bedroom.**

**After she was safely tucked into her blankets and clutching her Mickey Mouse doll, Mr. Jackson kissed his little girl's forehead and backed up towards the door.**

"**I love you, daddy," Alexis yawned.**

**Mr. Jackson smiled. "I love you too, Alix. Goodnight, sweetheart."**

**With the door shut, Mr. Jackson peeked in through the door across the hall, glad to see a second bundle of blankets and a four-year old curled up and fast asleep. He kicked a boy's teeball jersey out of the doorway and shut that door as well.**

"So there are two kids?" Frank asked. "Dang, that's quite a handful."

**Just as he was settled back into the bay window, he heard a door in the hallway open and close, and the sound of wheels dragging against carpet, and his heart sank. He turned to see yet another figure leave the hallway, this time much taller and more post-pubescent.**

"**What was that shrieking noise I heard earlier?" the newcomer asked in a voice that Mr. Jackson attributed to silky honey.**

Annabeth more attributed the voice to a well-worn woman who'd seen much in her life.

"**Alix found a spider in her room," he explained. "We talked for a little while and then I sent her back to bed."**

"**Shouldn't you be in bed as well?" the newcomer inquired.**

**Mr. Jackson shrugged. "I couldn't sleep." He opened his arms towards the figure, feeling much more miserable than when his daughter was talking instead.**

**The figure left the box-shaped item at her feet and stepped forward into the light of the storm.**

**It was a woman. Her long blonde hair was scattered into a tangled curtain down to her elbows, and her grey eyes reflected the storm minutely. She stepped forward into Mr. Jackson's embrace and curled into his lap, much the same as the smaller girl had done before her.**

No one said a word, but Annabeth could feel all eyes on her.

**Mr. Jackson stroked the blonde curls, pressing a small kiss against the woman's hair. They sat in silence for several minutes, until the woman spoke up.**

"**Percy…" she whispered, "you know I have to go."**

"So it _is_ Percy," Calypso mumbled. "Which means that that blonde woman must be you, Annabeth."

Annabeth said nothing, but stared down at the stereo, watching the tape roll from one side to the other.

"**That doesn't mean I want you to go," Mr. Jackson replied.**

**The woman sat up and looked him straight in the eye. "If I don't, **_**she**_** will come. I've pushed this off for long enough. Too much more, and she will get angry. She'll come, and not even my mother will be able to stop her from killing you, Alix, and Damon."**

"Who's 'she'?" Leo asked. "Gaia?"

"No," Rachel muttered. "Something tells me it's someone else."

"Whoever it is, it's threatening Annabeth and Percy," Grover growled.

"**But Annabeth—"**

"**No," the woman interrupted. "I'm sorry, Percy, but I have to do this. For your sake as well as the kids'."**

**Percy sighed, resting his forehead on Annabeth's shoulder. He didn't answer right away, instead taking her hand and bringing it to his lips, kissing her knuckles. He stared thoughtfully into the gold bands on her finger, unconsciously fiddling with the single one on his own finger.**

Annabeth flexed her hand, rubbing the spot where a wedding ring would be with her thumb.

"**Alright," he sighed finally. "Fine. But just promise me one thing."**

"**What?"**

**He looked up and pressed his hand to her cheek, staring forlornly into the two miniature storms that stared back. His forehead touched hers, and he whispered, "Promise you'll come back."**

"**Percy—"**

"**Just promise me," he insisted, knowing full well how tall of an order that was, especially for them.**

Out of the corner of her eye, Annabeth noticed Percy pull his eyebrows together in worry. She reached for his hand and he held tight to it like it was a lifeline.

**She smiled, and sealed the agreement with a kiss.**

"**I promise."**

**And with that, Percy watched as the most important woman in his life picked up her suitcase and walked out the door.**

Percy's grip on Annabeth's hand tightened, and she bit her lip.

* * *

**Meanwhile, in another room, Alix jumped up at a particularly loud crack of thunder. She scowled at her window, her mouth twisting into something that made her look like she'd just bitten into a lemon, and smacked her hand against the glass.**

Leo laughed. "Percy and Annabeth's kid or not, she's got spunk. I like her."

**With the next bout of lightning, she jumped, noticing a tiny scuttling black shape against her wall, and curled into a ball. She opened her mouth to scream, but then paused.**

_**Alexis Lucia Jackson. Brave defender of people.**_

**She frowned at the tiny shape, and said, "Stupid spider! My daddy said I'm brave! I'm not afraid of you!"**

**And with that, she brought her hand onto the black intruder with a sickening slap. And the spider was reduced to a black smudge on her blue-green walls.**

Annabeth wrinkled her nose in disgust.

**Alix smirked, wiped her hand on her jacket by her bed, and went back to sleep.**

After that, a more metallic, automatic, older woman's voice like you hear on automated phone calls said, "Please play side two."

[STOP]

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Read Review Follow.


	2. Chapter One

Happy Thanksgiving!

REMINDER: AFTER JANUARY 30TH, 2014, I WILL BE UPLOADING UNDER THE ACCOUNT USERNAME ANDICONVERSEHOODIES . THANK YOU.

Disclaimer: I do not own PJO or HoO.

* * *

_**Descendants of Heroes: The First Legacy**_

_**Chapter One**_

Percy reached forward to the stereo, popped out the tape, flipped it over so the side that had 1-2 painted in the top right corner faced outward, and slid it back in.

[PLAY]

**I never wanted this.**

It was the same girl's voice, once again about seventeen. She sounded so broken that it was hard to say much.

**Sure, when I was a little kid, it always seemed like an adventure to be me. Like Indiana Jones. I used to imagine walking out of the house, and people would cheer, "Look! It's Alix Jackson! Hero of the universe! Hooray!"**

No one said a word. Everyone in the room were well aware how wrong that childhood thought was.

**What can I say? I had big dreams.**

**But as I grew older, I realized how much of a burden my life was.**

**When I was about to be born, the Oracle of Delphi decreed that someday a descendant of Poseidon and Athena would cause either the ruin or the safety of the world. Apparently, the gods had learned from my dad, and—unlike most legacies—they had me retain the powerful blood, and I had all the powers my parents did, along with a few extras, like gifts from the gods.**

"Lucky…" Jason complained. "We had to do it all ourselves."

**Zeus gave me a "Get Through One Plane Trip Without Dying" card. Which is kind of a good thing. Otherwise my first plane trip would be "Go to Hades. Go directly to Hades. Do not pass Rome. Do not collect two hundred Denarii."**

**Hermes gave me a mischievous personality.**

**Artemis gave me archery abilities, so Poseidon's blood wouldn't weigh me down.**

**Athena gave me a lack of dyslexia. I certainly didn't complain about that one, although my mom used to call it unfair.**

"No fair!" Annabeth complained, directly as the stereo just described her as doing.

**Aphrodite gave me good looks. I don't know why I'd need that to save the world, but she did.**

**Every Olympian, plus Hades and Hestia, gave me something. But the two gifts that were the most influential to my life were from Ares and Apollo.**

**From Ares, I was given what he saw as a gift. But I see it as a terrible curse on my life.**

**And from Apollo, I was given something that has saved my life so many times that it's almost amusing.**

**What's that Kermit the Frog used to say? "It ain't easy being green?"**

**Sounds about right if you ask me: it ain't easy being different.**

"Somebody knows her pop culture," Leo chuckled.

"Who's Kermit the Frog?" Hazel asked.

**Some days though, it felt like all of that was for nothing. Like the prophecy was never going to come true, and I would be stuck tensed for a battle that would never happen, for the rest of my life.**

**Of course, all that changed the summer I turned seventeen.**

* * *

"**Pencils down." Ms. Boyd announced in her stern voice. "Close your packets and pass your Finals to the front."**

Ms. Boyd's voice came out high pitched and surprisingly intimidating.

**It was the last class of the last day of junior year, and I was **_**so **_**ready. So ready to be a senior. So ready for summer. So ready to stop hiding every day.**

**Camp HalfBlood, here I come.**

Leo leaned over to Piper on the other side of the couch for a high-five, who rolled her eyes and obliged.

**With five minutes left of class, I drummed my fingers on the desk, waiting impatiently for that clock to hit 1:10 and for the early release Finals Day to end at Willamette high.**

**At 1:08, my Stellar buzzed with a text message. It was from Acacia.**

**To: Alix, Kaida  
13:08  
Two minutes! And then I'll be a junior! And then it's off to downtown to collect paychecks! Hollywood purse at Fred Meyer, here I come! :D  
Acacia**

"Somebody's a shopaholic," Piper muttered, rolling her eyes. "Probably a little sister of mine."

"She's younger than Alix, so she could be another legacy," Annabeth suggested, remembering the junior/senior comments. "The first set of tapes is called The _First_ Legacy. Not the _Only_ Legacy."

**Within seconds, my phone buzzed again, and Kaida's reply flashed on my screen.**

**To: Acacia, Alix  
13:09  
You already have four purses. Why do you need another one?  
Kaida**

**To: Alix, Kaida  
13:09  
To go with my new jacket I'm buying as well. Duh. Just because you don't find being a teenager fascinating doesn't mean I can't. :P  
Acacia**

**Let me explain. Acacia is a thorny tree. No, seriously. She's a nymph of a Greek thorny tree called an Acacia. Her parents are Juniper and Grover Underwood. And don't ask me how a guy who's a goat from the waist down and a bush can have kids. I don't know. I don't want to know.**

Hazel turned slightly green at the abhorrent modern bluntness of Alix's comment, and began to fan herself in that old fashioned way of hers.

Percy, much like his daughter, gave Grover a weird look like he didn't want to know either.

Grover, for his embarrassing part, blushed.

"At least Juniper's not here to make it more awkward," Grover retorted to Percy's look. "The mother of _your_ kid is currently holding your hand."

Percy and Annabeth simultaneously blushed and studied their shoes.

**When Acacia was old enough, she put her foot down about wanting to be like a normal modern teenager, and since she was half satyr and half nymph, she looked human enough and could stand being away from her tree for a few weeks on end. So we planted an Acacia tree in the yard of anyone who could help her in town, and the Hecate children cast spells on each tree so they could be sub-homes for Acacia, with her major tree back at Camp HalfBlood near her mother's. With that, she could very easily stand going to classes and the mall for a day, and she could even travel to Camp at a moment's notice to warn the camp or get to safety if she was near one of her sub-trees.**

"She's like a warning alarm," Reyna commented. "If she wanted to, she could be quite useful in times of danger or war."

**I considered typing out a reply, but phones weren't allowed in my Physics Final, and the bell would ring in thirty seconds or so. So I stuffed it back in my pocket and put my pencil in my bag and my lucky sharpie in my back pocket.**

Rachel chuckled, patting her pocket where _her_ lucky sharpie stuck out, right next to her blue plastic hairbrush.

_**Bbbbbbrrrriiinnnnnggggg!**_

**The classroom was empty except for me within ten seconds, and I filed out afterwards.**

**Trying not to be crushed against the wall, I slipped out of the building and leaned back against the wall next to the science wing door at the front of campus to wait for my friends.**

**It wasn't hard to know when they were coming. Acacia's cheering was very distinctive. I guess it came with the petite good-looks of being a half-nymph.**

"**Alix!" she squealed, running forward to crush me in a hug. I squeaked and tensed, and she immediately pulled away.**

"**Right," she mumbled apologetically. "No touching. I was so excited I forgot for a bit. Sorry."**

"No touching?" Annabeth asked, surprised. She doubted she would have raised her daughter that way. "Why doesn't she like touching?"

**I shrugged. Acacia was a hugger. Simple as that. "Just try to remember, okay?"**

"**Hey, Alix," Kaida started. "Why **_**don't**_** you like being touched? I mean, some people don't like hugs and all, but you won't even shake a guy's **_**hand**_**. I'd call it germophobia, but I've watched you drop a piece of toast on the ground, butter down, and then pick it up and take a bite."**

"Gross," Calypso wrinkled her nose.

"Cool," Leo grinned.

Calypso punched his shoulder.

**I shrugged, not really wanting to talk about it.**

"**Ready to go?" I asked them, shouldering my backpack and changing the subject.**

"**Of course," Kaida grinned as we headed for the #40 bus stop across the street next to the donut shop. "I'm outta green stuff."**

"**Well, maybe if you stopped using it all up on food, you'd still have some," I teased.**

"**Well, maybe if **_**you**_** stopped sticking it all in your checking account and then 'forgetting' to get your debit card every day, you wouldn't be so stick-thin skinny," she retorted, sticking her tongue out at me.**

"**Hey, I eat," I complained. "I just work it off with training."**

"**Alix," Acacia sighed. "Only you would be training during the off-season."**

"**Off-season?" I gave her a weird look. "Since when does not-dying have an off-season?"**

"**Since shopping was invented," Acacia replied fake-haughtily, lifting her nose like she was Ms. Stiffler, the business teacher at Willamette.**

"**Which reminds me," Acacia added. "We **_**really**_** need to get you some new jeans. I mean those… ugh!" She wrinkled her nose in disgust.**

**I glanced down. Acacia's jeans were neat and faded and probably the latest fashion from Forever 21. Mine were wrinkled and filled with holes and coated in car paint and oil stains.**

**I shrugged. "They're comfortable."**

Leo grinned. "I like her."

**Our conversation continued until the bus reached the stop, and we all piled on. I'd taken some college classes at the local University of Oregon, so I had an I.D. card I could use as a free bus pass, while Kaida and Acacia had monthly passes they'd bought.**

**When Acacia got on first, I gave Kaida the "okay" sign.**

**For the last several years, every time the three of us got on a bus, Kaida and I would cease all conversation and time how long it took for Acacia to start talking. So far, her record was 47.856 seconds.**

"Somebody's a chatterbox," Jason mused. "Been hanging out with Leo, I presume?"

"Hey!" Leo complained.

**At 28 seconds, Acacia began to squirm.**

**At 38.792 seconds, she spoke up.**

_**Damn,**_** I thought. **_**No record break this time.**_

"**So…" Acacia mused. "Did you hear that Leo's kid is back?"**

**I almost fell out of my chair.**

"**WHAT?" I practically shrieked.**

"What? What?" Leo asked. "Something wrong with my kid?"

"Yeah," Jason joked. "It's yours."

**Acacia leaned back, almost scared. I felt guilty immediately. She was so skittish, like Grover. Even shared his fear of rabbits.**

Annabeth bit her lip to keep from laughing.

Leo, on the other hand, gave Grover an incredulous look. "Dude… you're afraid of rabbits?"

Grover glared at him. "Rabbits are bullies. They steal all the carrots."

"**Sorry," I apologized. "What do you mean that Steven is back?"**

**Steven Valdez has always been a sore subject for me. When we were kids and I visited Leo's and Calypso's Auto shop often, Steven and I were pretty close. He was only seven, like me, but he taught me how to change a tire.**

Piper laughed. "Yeah, that sounds like Leo's kid."

"Leo's and Calypso's auto shop…" Calypso smiled, most likely remembering Leo's promise to her back on Ojijia. She'd told Annabeth about Leo's first visit the day before, after Calypso had grown tired of Annabeth's territorial nature and jealousy and understanding that Calypso and Percy had a past.

Annabeth blushed, briefly remembering two days before, when she burst in on Percy and Calypso hugging to bury the hatchet and her hubris had jumped to bad conclusions. Annabeth had refused to talk to Percy for hours, which was the spark to the flame of Percy's silence after all they'd lost the past few years.

It made her incredibly guilty thinking about it, and she'd been trying to fix things ever since.

**Then things happened, and we grew apart. He started getting in with the wrong crowd, and eventually the educational system required him be sent off to reform school. I haven't seen him since we were twelve.**

Leo frowned. "Reform school? I know how that feels. Poor kid."

Rachel raised an eyebrow. "So you're worried about your son—not because he's a delinquent—but because you know he'll hate reform school?"

Leo shrugged. "I'm a delinquent now, aren't I?"

"**According to Calypso," Acacia began, "he's been a good boy at reform school, and they're letting him off on parole for the summer. So he came back home."**

"Parole?" Leo grinned. "Nice. I never got parole."

**I cringed, biting my lip. Things had been tense between us for years, and I hadn't even acknowledged his existence since he left.**

**Kaida and Acacia had never met Steven—they'd come to Eugene for Leo, Calypso, and my dad a year after he left—and continued to chat about him.**

**Acacia apparently hoped he was hot, cause "bad boys are sexy." I tried to picture the caramel-haired, chocolate-eyed seven year old with a missing tooth as "sexy," and couldn't do it.**

"My son and I are totally sexy!" Leo scoffed.

**Kaida just hoped he didn't mind girls beating him up. I wasn't about to tell her I used to punch him in the stomach all the time when he did something stupid when we were kids.**

Annabeth couldn't help remembering when she and Percy were fourteen and she punched his stomach when he asked her who he should ask to dance in Maine.

**Within about fifteen minutes, we reached the Eugene Station, and headed down Olive Street a couple blocks to Broadway.**

**I always liked Broadway Street. I don't know why, but being born in New York took the "city girl" out of me. Eugene was a compromise between me and my "city boy" dad because it was a small town with a big city feel. But there were a few streets left in Eugene that had that small town feel to them. Like Broadway. A tiny, brick-paved road with small dividers in the middle of the two-laned street, with tiny quaint shops on either side. The biggest thing there was a small mall called the Broadway Center. And even that mall had a small town feel to it.**

"Which explains why you guys live in Eugene, Oregon, instead of Manhattan," Grover mused.

"Hang on," Reyna spoke up. "That's twice now in the last minute or so. First, Alix lists Leo, Calypso, and Percy as living in Eugene. Then, she says she compromised with Percy about moving to Eugene."

"Yeah?" Jason shrugged. "So?"

It hit Annabeth like a ton of bricks, and she couldn't breathe.

"So where am I and Damon?" she whispered, shivering.

Absolute silence filled the room with its dense fog. No one spoke for several minutes.

"No."

Half of the room jumped, as Percy licked his lips to speak again.

"No," he almost whispered. "There's a good explanation for that. We're demigods. We like permanence"—he purposefully failed to mention that it was mainly Annabeth, for which she was greatful—"and something mortal like divorce wouldn't happen. Annabeth and Damon can't be dead either, because I'd sooner be dead before them. Something happened."

Frowns were exchanged, until Rachel backed Percy up.

"Percy is the most loyal guy I know," she reasoned. "He'd sooner die than see any of us hurt, most of all Annabeth and his own son. And he'd never let them leave of their own free will. He's right. Something happened."

Annabeth couldn't hold back a tiny smile at Percy's words, hoping they were him telling her she could be forgiven.

**We split up at that point. Kaida to the Bagel shop in the mall where she served coffee. Acacia to Imagine hair salon. And I headed down several blocks to Leo's and Calypso's Auto Shop.**

"**Valdez!" I yelled as I opened the door, knowing full well that sometimes Leo got too absorbed in either his work or his wife to hear the jingle bells on the door.**

"**In back, Alix!" Leo's voice called from behind the counter.**

**I stepped through the door to find a workshop messier than my desk at home. Messy enough that the 2006 Ford GT in the center almost blended in.**

**At first I couldn't see Leo (he never really grew too much out of his short phase), until I saw a pair of messy jeans that matched my own poking out from under the car.**

"**Hey, Leo," I hopped up on the GT's hood. "Anything difficult today?"**

"**Nah," Leo's voice sounded muffled from under the car. "Mrs. Jamieson just wanted me to change her oil so she didn't have to pay Wal-Mart so much."**

"**Ah," I nodded, grabbing the oil pan and sliding it under the car.**

"**Thanks," Leo replied, sounding like his wrench was in his mouth.**

"**No problem," I replied. "Should I find Calypso for my paycheck?"**

"**Yeah, sure." Leo replied. "It was supposed to be her turn to man the front counter today, but she had to go get milk and only just got back a couple minutes before you."**

**I nodded. "Thanks. Don't break the car."**

"**I'm not gonna break the car!" he whined from under the pile of metal and pistons.**

"Sounds like you'll get along pretty well with Percy's daughter," Nico chuckled to Leo. Everyone in the room jumped, having completely forgotten he was there.

**I slid in a side door, which led to Leo's and Calypso's small apartment. Turning for the kitchen, I called out Calypso's name.**

"**Right here, Alix!" she replied.**

**I stepped through the kitchen door with a smile. "Hey Calypso. How was shopping?"**

"**Horrible, to tell you the truth," she smiled amusedly. "I don't know how you mortals can do it."**

"**It's not exactly enjoyable for some of us, either," I replied, laughing.**

**Despite twenty years in the mortal world living with Engineer Flaming Valdez, Calypso was still baffled by the simplest things, like why chicken doesn't actually look like chicken at the supermarket. Because of that, she hated shopping. But Leo always spent the food money on gadgets and such, and Calypso got tired of it.**

Calypso cringed. "It isn't going to get easier?"

Leo draped his arm over her shoulder in comfort. At least, as best as he could after being so badly injured.

"**Need any help?" I asked, looking across the counter. They obviously needed more than milk.**

**She shook her head, smiling. "No thanks. I got it."**

**It was about that moment when I heard footsteps coming up from behind me.**

"**Hey, mom? Where do you guys put the extra bottles of shampoo—" The familiar voice behind me cut off with a noise that sounded like a strangled badger.**

"How does she know what a strangled badger sounds like?" Rachel asked.

**Ever so slowly, I turned around to stare down at a pair of worn-out Reeboks and dirty jeans like Leo's. Trailing my gaze upwards, I saw a blue v-neck t-shirt with a button-down black shirt over it, and hands gripping shampoo and conditioner bottles like they were trying to cause the soap to implode.**

"Oh, jeez," Leo muttered. "Here we go."

**Finally, I forced my gaze up to the one I'd seen covered in mud, dirt, grease, and even butter (don't ask) over the years, and found it hard to breathe.**

**It was Steven.**

**Well, crap.**

The metallic woman's voice replaced Alix's.

"Please play side three."

[STOP]

* * *

REMINDER: AFTER JANUARY 30TH, 2014, I WILL BE UPLOADING UNDER THE ACCOUNT USERNAME ANDICONVERSEHOODIES . THANK YOU.


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